Peter Murrell jailed five years for embezzling Scottish National Party funds
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Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the Scottish National Party and ex-husband of onetime Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, was sentenced to five years and three months in prison after pleading guilty to embezzling funds from the party he ran. Murrell had occupied an unusually powerful position inside the SNP, controlling its finances while his wife led the Scottish government, making him one of the most influential figures in Scottish politics without ever holding elected office. The embezzlement came from the party's own coffers, meaning the money was taken from an organization he personally managed for years. The guilty plea spared a trial but did nothing to cushion the fall for a man who had spent decades at the center of Scottish nationalist politics. Sturgeon herself was arrested and questioned as part of the broader police investigation into SNP finances, though she was not charged. The case, which unraveled one of the most prominent political partnerships in recent Scottish history, leaves the SNP still working through the institutional and reputational damage of what became known as Operation Branchform.
LONDON, Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the Scottish National Party, has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison after embezzling funds from his own party.
In May, Murrell pleaded guilty to embezzling over 400,000 from the party. The former SNP supremo, who ran the backroom operations of the pro-independence party for more than two decades, made hundreds of personal purchases with party funds between 2010 and 2022, falsely recording them in SNP accounts.
Those purchases included a £124,550 luxury camper van, bought in 2020.
Murrell is the ex-husband of the former SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, who has said she has “no knowledge or suspicion whatsoever that [Murrell] was using SNP funds for personal purposes.” A criminal inquiry cleared Sturgeon in March; in January 2025, she announced she was divorcing the disgraced former party official. Both had resigned from their positions in the SNP before Murrell’s arrest in April 2023.
“Your actions involved a significant breach of trust to the organization which you led and to the individual members and donors of that organization,” Judge Andrew Young told Murrell Tuesday as he delivered the sentence in Edinburgh’s High Court.
“The manner of embezzlement, although not particularly sophisticated, included the fabrication of invoices, and you gave false information to junior members of staff to then put into the accounting system,” he added. “All told, this is a calculated crime of dishonesty.”
John Scullion, Murrell’s lawyer, said his client is “overwhelmed by feelings of embarrassment and shame.”
Murrell was led away from the court in handcuffs after hearing his sentence.